I can’t believe we are actually talking about this. There is a difference between owning and renting. I’m financing my car, I’m paying to own it. After the payments are done, it’s 100% my car. Movies say “purchase” and literally outright don’t let you download and own a copy of the movie that you just paid full price for. I remember trying to purchase a TV show on YouTube and it stated that it’ll “expire” after two years of time of purchase. Bitch, you’re asking me to pay $100 for this shit. They have option to “rent” and to “purchase” and the expiration is on both, except one expires in 24 hours and the other in 2 years. Fuck that
Seems I hit a nerve. I don’t disagree with what you’ve put. The biggest issue here is the fact they say purchase rather than rent. I’d much rather I purchase a movie and own it but that’s not the business model they offer. In reality, if the continue with their current model they should rename it.
Right, but they won’t change the name, because they know your average Joe would just walk away from it, so they just keep it sketchy and keep fucking people over.
‚so would you steal a car?‘
nono… hear me out i actually have a thesis/question.
so, if you rent a car, that you don’t own, but ‚subscibe‘ to for a certain amount of time. does that mean by following the logic of this statement, that stealing this rented car is ok?
im aware that this aims at software and the non-materialness of software but still… do i have a point here?
Anti-piracy advocates ALWAYS make this ridiculous analogy, there are infinite copies of the software which you aren’t depriving anyone of, but there is a physical good in the car of which you are depriving.
I think the better analogy would be to ask if it is morally objectionable to pirate the software in the car that you own in order not to pay a subscription to the manufacturer:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price
I think this kind of profit maximizing behaviour is a better example for debate because the product (in this case the extra engine power) could only ever be used by the car owner and if the owner pirated the software then they are not depriving anyone else of anything.
The only wronged party are the investors who were trying to extract additional profit from the owner of the car.
Nonsense, paying doesn’t always mean you get to own it.
I would understand the excuse more if you let’s say bought a game on Steam, but then Steam went away forever and you lost the game and you don’t want to pay for it again. But by that time the game would be super cheap anyway… Well, unless it was now unavailable, then piracy is the only solution to actually getting it.
I pirate movies because I think digital access to them is overpriced, goes to the copyright holder instead of the creators, it’s convenient and most importantly because I can.
I can’t pirate going to the cinema, nor can I afford to build my own, therefore I gladly pay to have a seat and enjoy a movie there.
Edit: I thought this may be relevant to the movies example I gave. I don’t think movie studios, giving nothing back to society after massive profits are the ones we should debate the morals of stealing with.
If as the purchaser you don’t outright own the product you’ve purchased, then there’s no reasonable argument that it’s “stealing” if you pirate that product instead. At best it’s copyright infringement, and they can come at me in small claims court.
I don’t think piracy needs to be justified because different people have different reasons.
Sure you could argue that you’re not actually stealing but creating/downloading a copy of something it already exist.
I always found that anti piracy commercial “you wouldn’t steal a car” ridiculous as that’s not how piracy works.
For example, I do it because I don’t agree with how segmented the video streaming industry has become in recent years with this many different services that force you to buy a bunch of subscriptions while continuosly pulling content. Unlike the music streaming industry where all the most popular content (the majority of it) can be found on pretty much every serivce. You could have Spotify or Apple Music, not much difference (if any at all) in content or quality.
When I was a teenager I did it because I couldn’t afford to buy any sort of media content and options were limited. Pretty much everyone that owned an MP3 player was pirating music.
The entire issue with these arguments, though, is that the opposition parties just answer those claims with “then you shouldn’t be ingesting that content”. If you aren’t willing to pay for it, then you don’t have the right to view/listen/stream it. Free market a-holes will always, correctly, bring up that the market works by putting out products and people paying for what they support and not paying for what they don’t support. The problem is that you can’t pick and choose which pieces or parts you support or don’t and there’s no way to give companies that type of feedback because they don’t care.
Then you don’t get to ingest it. “I want it” isn’t any more of an argument than if it was a physical item.
For me, personally, piracy in this case is justified and can even serve as preservation of art. But to pretend that people are somehow entitled to it is childish.
Edit: If Stargate was the only thing you were pirating, you might have a point but let’s be honest… it’s not. People don’t pirate one show because they can’t watch and the subscribe to a piracy forum.
Says the “free market a-holes” I mentioned in the comment you replied to… In this case, they’re also right if we’re being honest and acknowledging that piracy is depriving the creator of income for their work.
In most cases the creator doesn’t hold the IP anymore, they signed it over to the platform. I don’t think it’s cool to pirate indy games when you can afford them because in that case the money is genuinely being withheld from the content creator, but in a lot of cases depriving Amazon of $5 for a TV show isn’t going to impact anyone.
It’s more complex than that - You aren’t wrong, but there’s a lot more going on. Almost anything made by an employee as part of their job belongs to the company. If Amazon licences your work to make something based on it, that’s one thing, but if you are a jobbing writer who gets assigned to develop a new series, Amazon will own everything. You get paid in your salary, not in royalties. And, frankly, a lot of creatives are quite happy with that arrangement (since it’s so rare to make money at all).
And that’s why it’s… Odd. Because the “creator” is some dude who has already been paid; literally has received his salary. But the performance of his show does impact him, at least to some degree. Low ratings don’t mean he gets paid less, but it means he’s unlikely to earn more in future.
this is a childish trope though, the content is created, if 1 person or 10 billions watch it it doesnt matter. Fairness is not a thing in the adult world.
It does matter though - The price paid to the creator was based on the prospect of X number of sales or Y numbers of adverts. Almost everyone who presently is trying to get their creative works seen is hoping that being seen helps them to “make it” and be able to write or sing or whatever as a full time job.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Don’t complain that modern media is garbage that doesn’t cater to you while also saying middle class soccer moms can sponsor everything.
That’s a fine argument that they might have, but piracy still isn’t stealing. If someone steals something from me, I am deprived of that thing. If someone copies my intellectual property, I am hypothetically impacted by loss of income, but I can still use that information.
They can say it’s morally wrong for someone to use or copy information against the owners wishes or without paying. They are welcome to that argument. None of us are obligated to care about their opinion.
If they can claim customers don’t own something, especially physical items, after purchase because they are being pedantic over how people interact with intellectual property, we can and should absolutely use the same distinction to distance piracy fromt theft.
That’s a dishonest argument. You are stealing. It’s just not the media that you’re stealing. You’re stealing income from the creator.
Imagine there’s an amusement park ride that you want to go on. If you find a way to sneak onto the ride, are you “stealing” the ride? You’re not stealing the physical ride but you’re entitling yourself to the experience without paying the person who has to create, run, maintain, and sell that experience.
Digital content is the same way. You’re justifying it because, in today’s day and age, most content is provided by giant corporations and financial assholes but don’t pretend that you’re not harming the creators of said work and potentially keeping them from making a living. If we lived in a perfect world where everyone was honest, we would have all this content be free and people would pay for it if they enjoyed it and wanted more of it and they’d just refuse to pay for things they thought were shit. This insistence that you’re not stealing because you’re not stealing the vehicle of entertainment is stupid and dishonest, though.
Just admit you’re stealing and leave it at that. Attempting to justify the morality of it (or whatever you’re attempting to do here) just makes you look silly. You’re taking the “benefit” of the content without reciprocating.
That’s a dishonest argument. You are stealing. It’s just not the media that you’re stealing. You’re stealing income from the creator.
I don’t agree. I think your trying to compare this to wage theft, wherin an employee is promised or legally guaranteed some income based on hours work, where after both parties have agreed to this the employee has performed the work and the employer is withholding some of the pay. This case is stealing - the trade was completed and the employer is in possession of an asset (eg the pay that they are entitled to) - this is not a physical thing, but it is a real thing, with real physical value, and in removing that the employer would stealing that asset. Obviously there’s a garguntuam difference here because both parties had agreed to exchange assets and the employer has taken ownership of that pay per the agreement. If someone decided to do that same work, absent agreement, obviously they can’t claim wage theft because they didn’t have any entitlement.
To be intellectually honest, you’d compare piracy to plagiarism. But that’s (correctly) not as alarming as stealing which is why we need to mislead people to make it seem worse.
Imagine there’s an amusement park ride that you want to go on. If you find a way to sneak onto the ride, are you “stealing” the ride? You’re not stealing the physical ride but you’re entitling yourself to the experience without paying the person who has to create, run, maintain, and sell that experience.
Entering without permission (in your example, paying) is trespassing. It’s fine argument to say that it’s morally wrong and that you shouldn’t do it. It’s blatantly wrong to claim it is stealing.
Digital content is the same way. You’re justifying it because, in today’s day and age, most content is provided by giant corporations and financial assholes but don’t pretend that you’re not harming the creators of said work and potentially keeping them from making a living. If we lived in a perfect world where everyone was honest, we would have all this content be free and people would pay for it if they enjoyed it and wanted more of it and they’d just refuse to pay for things they thought were shit. This insistence that you’re not stealing because you’re not stealing the vehicle of entertainment is stupid and dishonest, though.
Digital content is the same way, insofar as piracy is more akin to trespassing than theft. It’s an abstract argument to say not buying something is harming owners or creators, who are you (or anyone else) to dictate what people buy, or to attach some morality to that?
You say it harms creators, but the evidence says that pirated games make more money. I imagine your claim is based on an assumption that people who pirate stuff do so at the expense of people buying it. Have you bothered to explore that assumption any further? You might be surprised.
Just admit you’re stealing and leave it at that. Attempting to justify the morality of it (or whatever you’re attempting to do here) just makes you look silly. You’re taking the “benefit” of the content without reciprocating.
Piracy is quite literally not stealing. Stealing is an act of removing something from another’s possession, into your own. That is simply not what piracy is, and trying to falsey equate different crimes is every but as absurd as “stop pretending driving 5mphover the limit isn’t murder, it’s wrong and trying to justify the morality of it makes you look silly”
No. I am not comparing to wage theft. You’re just making a semantic argument rather than a substantive argument. Sure, if you want to argue semantics, then I’m viewing it as trespassing or service theft. Either way, you’re depriving a creator of income. If it’s a smaller creator, then you’re stealing money from them because, otherwise, you wouldn’t get the experience of ingesting their content. You’re entitling yourself to the experience of ingesting their work without contributing to your end of the contract. You’re only making the argument in the way you are because larger studios pay the creators on a contract basis. The truth is, though, that those creators don’t get hired if their content doesn’t result in material sales (whether physical or digital) of the content. No one invests in content that doesn’t make money and the excuse that “it still does make money even if I pirate” is just mental gymnastics.
Your second argument is also dishonest - the “no one is losing any money because the person wouldn’t have paid for it anyways” argument. That’s just an extension of the second part of what I said above. If piracy is ok for one person, it has to be ok for all and if it was ok for all, then the content wouldn’t make money. TV shows don’t get renewed. Sequels don’t get made. Sure, maybe the original content made money because some people were honest and paid for it but you are depriving a creator of an income because, had everyone paid, they’d have more work and more income coming in.
All this is to say that I’m fine with piracy. Sometimes you can’t afford it. Sometimes it’s not available legally. Sometimes it’s just a superior experience where you’re not forced to watch ads or deal with DRM. These are all fine. But to try and justify it as deserved or go through these mental gymnastics to claim it’s not stealing is just nonsense or arguing semantics. Just admit you’re stealing/trespassing and not holding to your end of the contract and admit that you’re harming creators.
I mean if I am not paying either way me ingesting that content or not makes 0 difference to the producer. It is the same logic as throwing excess food to the trash so homeless can’t eat it.
The producer and publisher paid a cost for you to have heard and develop an interest in their products. So yes, it makes a difference to them if that investment turns into you using the content but not paying for it. You’re suddenly a target audience without returns.
It does, though, by the argument they’re making. If you could only ingest it by paying for it, you’d have to have paid for it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to.
The very fact that you’re watching it without paying kind of proves that point.
I’ve never understood the “piracy is morally acceptable” argument, personally. Best I can agree with is that piracy is not morally bad in some cases. Especially since me pirating something has no impact if I never would have paid for it in the first place. But it can often times be morally wrong (people who refuse to buy games from indie studios despite having the money to do so would usually fall into this category imo), and I can’t imagine any scenario outside of the preservation of media where it’s actually morally good to pirate things.
Like, I’m all for people not buying things that they don’t support. And I feel no sympathy for large companies that make more money in a day than I’ll make in a lifetime losing out on sales. But when did it become my right to play Hogwarts Legacy or watch a show without paying for it?
If piracy were legal (just the download for personal use, not redistribution), let’s pretend for a second. I bet the majority of people wouldn’t even be here asking these questions.
“If it’s legal then why not”. That’s how many people think.
However the morality aspects still stand and shouldn’t be skwed by the legal aspect.
When you made the example of pirating indie games, if piracy is legal, people would legally download those games from third party sources, even the people who wouldn’t do it if piracy were illegal (like it is in reality).
At that point it’ll become some sort of “if I can afford it I will support the studio and buy the game, if I can’t I will get it for free because people won’t think I’m stealing regardless”. Kind of like a donate if you can sort of system some software developers have in place.
In reality nothing prevents the same people from thinking that way right now. It’s just the stigma behind pirating even those indie games which is still skewed and dependant by the legal aspect of the situation.
The truth about digital products is that if someone doesn’t want to pay for something they won’t pay regardless and it doesn’t rob anyone else from being able to purchase and downloade the same exact content the legit way.
The mistake is seeing pirates as otherwise potential paying customers if piracy wasn’t an option.
“If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar’s own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve.”
Eben Moglen
I think imposing artificial scarcity on art, information, and tools; and rationing based on those with the ability to pay is immoral. I mean sure, most art that people pirate is just empty entertainment. But imposing artificial scarcity on tools (software such as OSs, CAD, productivity software, etc), news, and academic papers behind expensive licenses that many cannot afford to pay is objectively immoral. If piracy did not exist, I am positive the world would be without many of the technological advances we have today.
Not to mention the fact that oftentimes pirated content is just better. DRM free games run better and some work people have put into remastering media in general is outstanding.
I found a collection of the DBZ anime which is color corrected, proper aspect ratio, higher resolution, improved audio (from a different home release with better audio) made by fans for no profit. Even if you wanted to you couldn’t purchase that but piracy made it possible.
Unofficial remasters of some old, poorly mastered songs have made a difference for me and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy them without resorting to piracy.
As a Muslim, it is already forbidden to implement artificial scarcity. So as a Muslim, it’s not an opinion, but objectively wrong, because God said that it is wrong.
I will warn you: We believe that there is good and wrong, and not humans, but Allah (god) is the one who created us and Allah is the one who decides what is good and what is wrong.
So basically what is wrong and what is right is pre-decided by Allah, so we don’t have to decide if something is bad or not, because Allah already gave the info of that to us.
If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase (false scarcity by removal fro
market) or if despite purchasing a physical object, say a car, I can’t fully use it or repair it without special software I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas.
If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase … I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas.
I don’t think this particular line of thought makes for a very good argument without more info. The other case makes sense. But for this one, people aren’t obligated to sell you things. If you own something sentimental or private to you that I want, you’re not obligated to sell it to me if I want it and I’m not justified in stealing it from you if you don’t want to sell it.
For ex: Think of embarassing photos of yourself, private letters between you and others etc.
I think more info was given with the examples they used though. They reveal that the problem is with copyright, where a company can both stop you from buying something from them and stop you from buying it elsewhere by still technically owning it.
If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase (false scarcity by removal fro market) or if despite purchasing a physical object, say a car, I can’t fully use it or repair it without special software I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas.
I’m only talking about the first case of the or here. I specifically pointed out the other case that you are referring to was not something I had an issue with.
Edit: And how does this change anything? Companies aren’t any more obligated to sell people things than individuals. There are instances where it may be beneficial for a company to choose not to sell certain products, for example if a better product exists that should succeed the old product or when a certain product is later discovered to be harmful in some way.
More if it’s something that was available but only from one specific location several years ago and it’s no longer available or incredibly difficult to find for purchase. A good example would be certain old console video games that can be emulated now but have long since gone out of print and are either unavailable for purchase as digital or insanely expensive or unavailable for original hard copy.
There’s issues with “right to repair” too but that’s a different discussion, I think.
I feel like the same kind of argument can probably extend to either intellectual property or real physical objects. With physical objects certain limits have to apply of course (like me withholding things you need to survive could potentially justify your theft).
With intellectual property, if you write stories for yourself to pass the time you aren’t obligated to share/sell those stories to me and it would be wrong for me to break into your home and make copies of them if you chose not to sell/share them with me.
See, since I’m your buddy, you tell me bits and pieces of the stories you’re writing for fun. And I, a Hollywood mogul, take those ideas, hand them off to a development crew and put out a movie based on your ideas. You get nothing.
This is normal in Hollywood. Also, I underpay my development crew because capitalism. They hate me but my stockholders think I’m okay. Original content creators like you? Well, there’s a reason the writers are on strike, since screenwriting pays so poorly it’s downgraded to hobby.
It’s a problem especially in the record labels, in which most artists have their content signed away for a pittance because that was the only way to get heard which is changing through the internet, which is why the RIAA is eager to speed up enshittification of social media. And there are some interesting conspiracy theories about why Kim Dotcom was arrested in 2012 days before he rolled out a new music distro system that had dozens of major Hip Hop artists involved that allowed artists to get music out for free and then keep all their touring proceeds. But that died with the Megaupload seizure. Remember that?
If you really want to shill for folks like Disney and Sony and Time Warner, feel free, but you can expect your content to enshittify as well (as it has been for years now). I’m sure Fast and Furious XIII will be awesome.
Yeah, I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. I think you’re misrepresenting and/or misunderstanding my point. My point is that the argument below needs more details to justify why/when piracy is acceptable. I’m not claiming piracy is totally unethical or anything like that, nor am I shilling for anything.
If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase … I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think your point about ethicality problems in the entertainment industry makes for a very satisfying argument either. If my neighbor steals from somebody else, am I justified in stealing from my neighbor? Maybe? But that reeks of self-interest and doesn’t actually help the real victim.
If my neighbor steals a pound of sugar from somebody and I steal their car, to me it seems like I’m still doing something unethical. If my neighbor steals somebodies life savings and I steal their car, it feels like at best I’m doing something morally neutral, if not still outright wrong.
I’m not saying piracy is unethical, nor am I saying people shouldn’t pirate. What I’m saying is that certain arguments for piracy being ethical aren’t very good.
This is not about whether your neighbor is committing wrongdoing in your community, rather whether the system itself, and the edifices that hold it up are conducting themselves in good faith. Without these major players pressuring government to extend the enforced monopolies of copyright longer (that is, robbing the public – you and I – of its catalog of public-domain material) and failing to enforce educational and fair use, we wouldn’t have IP laws at all, and piracy would not be a thing.
Granted, some argue that creators would have no interest in creating, except that they do when they are given the means to do so. This is one of the threats social media has, in providing entertainment that is not sending its profits to the major players in the industry.
We’re not pirating from the artists. We’re not pirating from our neighbors. We’re pirating from giant corporations who’ve been plying the government for over a century now to strip rights from the public.
And given the government does not execute its function in good faith (that is, in service of the public, including protecting its interests from corporate capture), we have grounds to argue the authority of the state is forfeit, ruling the public by force rather than by consent (our elections allow us to choose from oligarch selects, and they have to obey plutocrats to keep their careers.)
Without the artificial construct by governing systems to make IP a thing to be licensed (and the use of DRM to control its distribution) neither patents nor copyrighted material would be a thing at all, let alone have been turned into the monstrosties that are US and EU IP law.
This is not about whether your neighbor is committing wrongdoing in your community, rather whether the system itself, and the edifices that hold it up are conducting themselves in good faith. Without these major players pressuring government to extend the enforced monopolies of copyright longer (that is, robbing the public – you and I – of its catalog of public-domain material) and failing to enforce educational and fair use, we wouldn’t have IP laws at all, and piracy would not be a thing.
Firstly, the neighbor comment I made is an analogy. Nobody is claiming this is about literal neighbors committing wrongdoings in a community. I’m not sure if you’ve missed my point with that analogy or if you’re choosing to willfully misunderstand it here?
Second, what you’re claiming here isn’t correct when you talk about “what this is about”. My comment which you are replying to was not about whether “the system itself, and the edifices holding it up are conducting themselves in good faith” or anything like that. My whole point is about whether “If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase … I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas.” is good reasoning or not. Nobody is debating you on whether the modern media industries, the government, etc are corrupt or acting in good faith. That has nothing to do with my actual point.
We’re not pirating from the artists. We’re not pirating from our neighbors. We’re pirating from giant corporations who’ve been plying the government for over a century now to strip rights from the public.
You keep jumping back to these points of “well the media corporations, the government, etc did X wrong by us, so we’re automatically justified to pirate”, that’s not how this works. The whole issue is why does that justify piracy? Doubling down and trying to say “BUT I WAS WRONGED!” is not a good argument here. Being wronged in some way does not make it morally acceptable to just do whatever you like.
You’re only partly right.
You example services. Of course it is not possible to own services.
Piracy is only applicable to products.
The point of the Twitter guy is, that companies intentionally stop selling their software etc. as products to sell you the same thing as a service, so that you cannot own it.
It’s true that SaaS does stop you from owning software… But what good does “owning” a piece of software do you if you can’t get updates anyway? Back in the pre-internet era we got used to software existing as discrete versions but it hasn’t been like that for a LONG time. As soon as patching became a regular occurrence, “ownership” became a service contract with a CD attached. Then the CD vanished, and it just became a service.
While I do dislike needless “as a service” stuff, that model does genuinely suit a lot of people. It’s not a conjob; companies offer this stuff because a lot of customers want it. Most of the companies that are selling you SaaS stuff themselves use SaaS things in-house.
It’s also (typically) modeled in such a way that your software is consistently updated to new versions on release. You get active hotfixes, patches and improvements as they are released.
Most people jump software versions in stages of about 2-3 years. You’ll find a lot of SaaS packages will be priced as if you were instead purchasing the software at those stages.
All in all, if you have every intention of using the software regularly, it’s priced well and typically makes for a much better user experience.
Indeed. And that’s without considering that a lot of SaaS stuff on the consumer level lets you cancel at any time. Ok, you can get burned for 30 bucks if it turns out not to be all that useful, but the full packages are typically priced somewhere between eyewatering and “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING?”, and they always have been.
A perfect example here - GeForce Now costs like 20 per month, cancel whenever you like. A 4080 gpu costs way over a grand. It’s up to you whether you prefer to own, rent or not bother at all, but it doesn’t take a lot to convince me to spend 20 bucks, but it does take a lot to get me to stump up for a whole new PC.
I think you slightly missed the point too. I think he meant that even when you buy games for example (or any other software).You don’t actually buy the game. You only buy a license to use that software.
Not only that. Remember when Sony said that you don’t own the PS4 you bought for several hundred bucks but just purchased the right to use it as intended so you’re not allowed to tinker with it and for example install another operating system or figure out how their security works.
That’s what is meant by buying is not owning anymore.
I could go on about cars with subscriptions for heated seats that are already installed but not turned on etc.
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How does that work though if you rent a car? You don’t own it, but still stealing if you “steal” it.
You’re preventing its use by someone else (assuming you bring it back in one piece).
how does everybody misses this very crucial point???
Piracy is like a digital photocopier to an NFT
I can’t believe we are actually talking about this. There is a difference between owning and renting. I’m financing my car, I’m paying to own it. After the payments are done, it’s 100% my car. Movies say “purchase” and literally outright don’t let you download and own a copy of the movie that you just paid full price for. I remember trying to purchase a TV show on YouTube and it stated that it’ll “expire” after two years of time of purchase. Bitch, you’re asking me to pay $100 for this shit. They have option to “rent” and to “purchase” and the expiration is on both, except one expires in 24 hours and the other in 2 years. Fuck that
Seems I hit a nerve. I don’t disagree with what you’ve put. The biggest issue here is the fact they say purchase rather than rent. I’d much rather I purchase a movie and own it but that’s not the business model they offer. In reality, if the continue with their current model they should rename it.
Right, but they won’t change the name, because they know your average Joe would just walk away from it, so they just keep it sketchy and keep fucking people over.
‚so would you steal a car?‘ nono… hear me out i actually have a thesis/question.
so, if you rent a car, that you don’t own, but ‚subscibe‘ to for a certain amount of time. does that mean by following the logic of this statement, that stealing this rented car is ok? im aware that this aims at software and the non-materialness of software but still… do i have a point here?
Anti-piracy advocates ALWAYS make this ridiculous analogy, there are infinite copies of the software which you aren’t depriving anyone of, but there is a physical good in the car of which you are depriving.
im def not anti-piracy i just wanted to explore this thought. not the first one obv. nvm
no you dont. sharing doesnt involve the removal of property
I think the better analogy would be to ask if it is morally objectionable to pirate the software in the car that you own in order not to pay a subscription to the manufacturer: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price I think this kind of profit maximizing behaviour is a better example for debate because the product (in this case the extra engine power) could only ever be used by the car owner and if the owner pirated the software then they are not depriving anyone else of anything. The only wronged party are the investors who were trying to extract additional profit from the owner of the car.
Nonsense, paying doesn’t always mean you get to own it. I would understand the excuse more if you let’s say bought a game on Steam, but then Steam went away forever and you lost the game and you don’t want to pay for it again. But by that time the game would be super cheap anyway… Well, unless it was now unavailable, then piracy is the only solution to actually getting it.
Do we really need excuses for pirating media?
I pirate movies because I think digital access to them is overpriced, goes to the copyright holder instead of the creators, it’s convenient and most importantly because I can.
I can’t pirate going to the cinema, nor can I afford to build my own, therefore I gladly pay to have a seat and enjoy a movie there.
Edit: I thought this may be relevant to the movies example I gave. I don’t think movie studios, giving nothing back to society after massive profits are the ones we should debate the morals of stealing with.
But all of those are excuses?
If as the purchaser you don’t outright own the product you’ve purchased, then there’s no reasonable argument that it’s “stealing” if you pirate that product instead. At best it’s copyright infringement, and they can come at me in small claims court.
I don’t even know if it’s technically copyright since if you’re not sharing it you’re not infringing on their market, marketing, or product.
I don’t think piracy needs to be justified because different people have different reasons.
Sure you could argue that you’re not actually stealing but creating/downloading a copy of something it already exist. I always found that anti piracy commercial “you wouldn’t steal a car” ridiculous as that’s not how piracy works.
For example, I do it because I don’t agree with how segmented the video streaming industry has become in recent years with this many different services that force you to buy a bunch of subscriptions while continuosly pulling content. Unlike the music streaming industry where all the most popular content (the majority of it) can be found on pretty much every serivce. You could have Spotify or Apple Music, not much difference (if any at all) in content or quality.
When I was a teenager I did it because I couldn’t afford to buy any sort of media content and options were limited. Pretty much everyone that owned an MP3 player was pirating music.
Here’s my justification:
I paid for a product. I’m getting that product, by hook or by crook.
The entire issue with these arguments, though, is that the opposition parties just answer those claims with “then you shouldn’t be ingesting that content”. If you aren’t willing to pay for it, then you don’t have the right to view/listen/stream it. Free market a-holes will always, correctly, bring up that the market works by putting out products and people paying for what they support and not paying for what they don’t support. The problem is that you can’t pick and choose which pieces or parts you support or don’t and there’s no way to give companies that type of feedback because they don’t care.
I’m willing to pay for it, but I’m not allowed to do so
For example, Amazon/MGM still don’t allow me to pay to watch Stargate
Then you don’t get to ingest it. “I want it” isn’t any more of an argument than if it was a physical item.
For me, personally, piracy in this case is justified and can even serve as preservation of art. But to pretend that people are somehow entitled to it is childish.
Edit: If Stargate was the only thing you were pirating, you might have a point but let’s be honest… it’s not. People don’t pirate one show because they can’t watch and the subscribe to a piracy forum.
Says who? You? MGM?
Says the “free market a-holes” I mentioned in the comment you replied to… In this case, they’re also right if we’re being honest and acknowledging that piracy is depriving the creator of income for their work.
In most cases the creator doesn’t hold the IP anymore, they signed it over to the platform. I don’t think it’s cool to pirate indy games when you can afford them because in that case the money is genuinely being withheld from the content creator, but in a lot of cases depriving Amazon of $5 for a TV show isn’t going to impact anyone.
It’s more complex than that - You aren’t wrong, but there’s a lot more going on. Almost anything made by an employee as part of their job belongs to the company. If Amazon licences your work to make something based on it, that’s one thing, but if you are a jobbing writer who gets assigned to develop a new series, Amazon will own everything. You get paid in your salary, not in royalties. And, frankly, a lot of creatives are quite happy with that arrangement (since it’s so rare to make money at all).
And that’s why it’s… Odd. Because the “creator” is some dude who has already been paid; literally has received his salary. But the performance of his show does impact him, at least to some degree. Low ratings don’t mean he gets paid less, but it means he’s unlikely to earn more in future.
this is a childish trope though, the content is created, if 1 person or 10 billions watch it it doesnt matter. Fairness is not a thing in the adult world.
Nonsense. It matters to the person who made it if they’re getting paid for it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to watch it.
those people are getting paid regardless in most cases. they dont get per sale profit.
That’s irrelevant. If everyone pirates the content, then that creator doesn’t get hired and paid again/anymore.
which is not happening…
So you’re entitled to do it just because everyone isn’t? What a crock of shit. What makes you special and exempt from what others have to do?
It does matter though - The price paid to the creator was based on the prospect of X number of sales or Y numbers of adverts. Almost everyone who presently is trying to get their creative works seen is hoping that being seen helps them to “make it” and be able to write or sing or whatever as a full time job.
which nobody is preventing them to. a few people can sponsor that stuff for the rest.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Don’t complain that modern media is garbage that doesn’t cater to you while also saying middle class soccer moms can sponsor everything.
i dont, we could stop having new media tomorrow and i would be ok with it :)
Says the guy not paying for shit that he’s still enjoying. What an entitled child.
That’s a fine argument that they might have, but piracy still isn’t stealing. If someone steals something from me, I am deprived of that thing. If someone copies my intellectual property, I am hypothetically impacted by loss of income, but I can still use that information.
They can say it’s morally wrong for someone to use or copy information against the owners wishes or without paying. They are welcome to that argument. None of us are obligated to care about their opinion.
If they can claim customers don’t own something, especially physical items, after purchase because they are being pedantic over how people interact with intellectual property, we can and should absolutely use the same distinction to distance piracy fromt theft.
That’s a dishonest argument. You are stealing. It’s just not the media that you’re stealing. You’re stealing income from the creator.
Imagine there’s an amusement park ride that you want to go on. If you find a way to sneak onto the ride, are you “stealing” the ride? You’re not stealing the physical ride but you’re entitling yourself to the experience without paying the person who has to create, run, maintain, and sell that experience.
Digital content is the same way. You’re justifying it because, in today’s day and age, most content is provided by giant corporations and financial assholes but don’t pretend that you’re not harming the creators of said work and potentially keeping them from making a living. If we lived in a perfect world where everyone was honest, we would have all this content be free and people would pay for it if they enjoyed it and wanted more of it and they’d just refuse to pay for things they thought were shit. This insistence that you’re not stealing because you’re not stealing the vehicle of entertainment is stupid and dishonest, though.
Just admit you’re stealing and leave it at that. Attempting to justify the morality of it (or whatever you’re attempting to do here) just makes you look silly. You’re taking the “benefit” of the content without reciprocating.
I don’t agree. I think your trying to compare this to wage theft, wherin an employee is promised or legally guaranteed some income based on hours work, where after both parties have agreed to this the employee has performed the work and the employer is withholding some of the pay. This case is stealing - the trade was completed and the employer is in possession of an asset (eg the pay that they are entitled to) - this is not a physical thing, but it is a real thing, with real physical value, and in removing that the employer would stealing that asset. Obviously there’s a garguntuam difference here because both parties had agreed to exchange assets and the employer has taken ownership of that pay per the agreement. If someone decided to do that same work, absent agreement, obviously they can’t claim wage theft because they didn’t have any entitlement.
To be intellectually honest, you’d compare piracy to plagiarism. But that’s (correctly) not as alarming as stealing which is why we need to mislead people to make it seem worse.
Entering without permission (in your example, paying) is trespassing. It’s fine argument to say that it’s morally wrong and that you shouldn’t do it. It’s blatantly wrong to claim it is stealing.
Digital content is the same way, insofar as piracy is more akin to trespassing than theft. It’s an abstract argument to say not buying something is harming owners or creators, who are you (or anyone else) to dictate what people buy, or to attach some morality to that?
You say it harms creators, but the evidence says that pirated games make more money. I imagine your claim is based on an assumption that people who pirate stuff do so at the expense of people buying it. Have you bothered to explore that assumption any further? You might be surprised.
Piracy is quite literally not stealing. Stealing is an act of removing something from another’s possession, into your own. That is simply not what piracy is, and trying to falsey equate different crimes is every but as absurd as “stop pretending driving 5mphover the limit isn’t murder, it’s wrong and trying to justify the morality of it makes you look silly”
No. I am not comparing to wage theft. You’re just making a semantic argument rather than a substantive argument. Sure, if you want to argue semantics, then I’m viewing it as trespassing or service theft. Either way, you’re depriving a creator of income. If it’s a smaller creator, then you’re stealing money from them because, otherwise, you wouldn’t get the experience of ingesting their content. You’re entitling yourself to the experience of ingesting their work without contributing to your end of the contract. You’re only making the argument in the way you are because larger studios pay the creators on a contract basis. The truth is, though, that those creators don’t get hired if their content doesn’t result in material sales (whether physical or digital) of the content. No one invests in content that doesn’t make money and the excuse that “it still does make money even if I pirate” is just mental gymnastics.
Your second argument is also dishonest - the “no one is losing any money because the person wouldn’t have paid for it anyways” argument. That’s just an extension of the second part of what I said above. If piracy is ok for one person, it has to be ok for all and if it was ok for all, then the content wouldn’t make money. TV shows don’t get renewed. Sequels don’t get made. Sure, maybe the original content made money because some people were honest and paid for it but you are depriving a creator of an income because, had everyone paid, they’d have more work and more income coming in.
All this is to say that I’m fine with piracy. Sometimes you can’t afford it. Sometimes it’s not available legally. Sometimes it’s just a superior experience where you’re not forced to watch ads or deal with DRM. These are all fine. But to try and justify it as deserved or go through these mental gymnastics to claim it’s not stealing is just nonsense or arguing semantics. Just admit you’re stealing/trespassing and not holding to your end of the contract and admit that you’re harming creators.
I mean if I am not paying either way me ingesting that content or not makes 0 difference to the producer. It is the same logic as throwing excess food to the trash so homeless can’t eat it.
The producer and publisher paid a cost for you to have heard and develop an interest in their products. So yes, it makes a difference to them if that investment turns into you using the content but not paying for it. You’re suddenly a target audience without returns.
It does, though, by the argument they’re making. If you could only ingest it by paying for it, you’d have to have paid for it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to.
The very fact that you’re watching it without paying kind of proves that point.
This is a pretty sorry justification. Just cut the shit and steak what you want, don’t blow smoke up our ass about segmentation.
Like segmentation isn’t an issue…
It is, but it doesn’t justify your actions.
To you perhaps, I’m perfectly fine with it.
I’ve never understood the “piracy is morally acceptable” argument, personally. Best I can agree with is that piracy is not morally bad in some cases. Especially since me pirating something has no impact if I never would have paid for it in the first place. But it can often times be morally wrong (people who refuse to buy games from indie studios despite having the money to do so would usually fall into this category imo), and I can’t imagine any scenario outside of the preservation of media where it’s actually morally good to pirate things.
Like, I’m all for people not buying things that they don’t support. And I feel no sympathy for large companies that make more money in a day than I’ll make in a lifetime losing out on sales. But when did it become my right to play Hogwarts Legacy or watch a show without paying for it?
refusing to buy something is never immoral. the fact you used that content at some point is completely irrelevant.
If piracy were legal (just the download for personal use, not redistribution), let’s pretend for a second. I bet the majority of people wouldn’t even be here asking these questions.
“If it’s legal then why not”. That’s how many people think. However the morality aspects still stand and shouldn’t be skwed by the legal aspect. When you made the example of pirating indie games, if piracy is legal, people would legally download those games from third party sources, even the people who wouldn’t do it if piracy were illegal (like it is in reality).
At that point it’ll become some sort of “if I can afford it I will support the studio and buy the game, if I can’t I will get it for free because people won’t think I’m stealing regardless”. Kind of like a donate if you can sort of system some software developers have in place.
In reality nothing prevents the same people from thinking that way right now. It’s just the stigma behind pirating even those indie games which is still skewed and dependant by the legal aspect of the situation.
The truth about digital products is that if someone doesn’t want to pay for something they won’t pay regardless and it doesn’t rob anyone else from being able to purchase and downloade the same exact content the legit way. The mistake is seeing pirates as otherwise potential paying customers if piracy wasn’t an option.
undefined> If piracy were legal (just the download for personal use, not redistribution
it literally is in most of the world.
That is actually the case in some countries, like the Czech Republic. But, torrents aren’t because you are also uploading
“If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar’s own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve.”
I think imposing artificial scarcity on art, information, and tools; and rationing based on those with the ability to pay is immoral. I mean sure, most art that people pirate is just empty entertainment. But imposing artificial scarcity on tools (software such as OSs, CAD, productivity software, etc), news, and academic papers behind expensive licenses that many cannot afford to pay is objectively immoral. If piracy did not exist, I am positive the world would be without many of the technological advances we have today.
Not to mention the fact that oftentimes pirated content is just better. DRM free games run better and some work people have put into remastering media in general is outstanding.
I found a collection of the DBZ anime which is color corrected, proper aspect ratio, higher resolution, improved audio (from a different home release with better audio) made by fans for no profit. Even if you wanted to you couldn’t purchase that but piracy made it possible.
Unofficial remasters of some old, poorly mastered songs have made a difference for me and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy them without resorting to piracy.
As a Muslim, it is already forbidden to implement artificial scarcity. So as a Muslim, it’s not an opinion, but objectively wrong, because God said that it is wrong.
Genuinely curious about that now…
I will warn you: We believe that there is good and wrong, and not humans, but Allah (god) is the one who created us and Allah is the one who decides what is good and what is wrong.
So basically what is wrong and what is right is pre-decided by Allah, so we don’t have to decide if something is bad or not, because Allah already gave the info of that to us.
I was interested about the artificial scarcity part
Nature wants information to be Free!
Piracy is Good:The Moral Imperative of Sharing Knowledge
check out
This is some cope shit. We’re stealing, it’s not morally correct for most of us. No one cares enough to stop though, that includes me.
nah stealing removes something from somebody, i never did that.
but you are wrong nothing is removed. you cant deny that.
Absolutely amazing, let’s just hope I won’t forget about it in my next “piracy-is-moral” argument
“92 minutes of applauses”
based af
Good point right there.
Eyyy, I’m the guy in the screenshot! Holy attention Batman!
Well paying for it is essentially leasing it, piracy is neither. So…
so lease deez nutz
gottem
If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase (false scarcity by removal fro market) or if despite purchasing a physical object, say a car, I can’t fully use it or repair it without special software I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas.
I don’t think this particular line of thought makes for a very good argument without more info. The other case makes sense. But for this one, people aren’t obligated to sell you things. If you own something sentimental or private to you that I want, you’re not obligated to sell it to me if I want it and I’m not justified in stealing it from you if you don’t want to sell it.
For ex: Think of embarassing photos of yourself, private letters between you and others etc.
I think more info was given with the examples they used though. They reveal that the problem is with copyright, where a company can both stop you from buying something from them and stop you from buying it elsewhere by still technically owning it.
With their original comment,
I’m only talking about the first case of the or here. I specifically pointed out the other case that you are referring to was not something I had an issue with.
Edit: And how does this change anything? Companies aren’t any more obligated to sell people things than individuals. There are instances where it may be beneficial for a company to choose not to sell certain products, for example if a better product exists that should succeed the old product or when a certain product is later discovered to be harmful in some way.
More if it’s something that was available but only from one specific location several years ago and it’s no longer available or incredibly difficult to find for purchase. A good example would be certain old console video games that can be emulated now but have long since gone out of print and are either unavailable for purchase as digital or insanely expensive or unavailable for original hard copy.
There’s issues with “right to repair” too but that’s a different discussion, I think.
Are we talking things, or intellectual property? Not the same.
I feel like the same kind of argument can probably extend to either intellectual property or real physical objects. With physical objects certain limits have to apply of course (like me withholding things you need to survive could potentially justify your theft).
With intellectual property, if you write stories for yourself to pass the time you aren’t obligated to share/sell those stories to me and it would be wrong for me to break into your home and make copies of them if you chose not to sell/share them with me.
Why breaking into someone’s home?
See, since I’m your buddy, you tell me bits and pieces of the stories you’re writing for fun. And I, a Hollywood mogul, take those ideas, hand them off to a development crew and put out a movie based on your ideas. You get nothing.
This is normal in Hollywood. Also, I underpay my development crew because capitalism. They hate me but my stockholders think I’m okay. Original content creators like you? Well, there’s a reason the writers are on strike, since screenwriting pays so poorly it’s downgraded to hobby.
It’s a problem especially in the record labels, in which most artists have their content signed away for a pittance because that was the only way to get heard which is changing through the internet, which is why the RIAA is eager to speed up enshittification of social media. And there are some interesting conspiracy theories about why Kim Dotcom was arrested in 2012 days before he rolled out a new music distro system that had dozens of major Hip Hop artists involved that allowed artists to get music out for free and then keep all their touring proceeds. But that died with the Megaupload seizure. Remember that?
If you really want to shill for folks like Disney and Sony and Time Warner, feel free, but you can expect your content to enshittify as well (as it has been for years now). I’m sure Fast and Furious XIII will be awesome.
Yeah, I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. I think you’re misrepresenting and/or misunderstanding my point. My point is that the argument below needs more details to justify why/when piracy is acceptable. I’m not claiming piracy is totally unethical or anything like that, nor am I shilling for anything.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think your point about ethicality problems in the entertainment industry makes for a very satisfying argument either. If my neighbor steals from somebody else, am I justified in stealing from my neighbor? Maybe? But that reeks of self-interest and doesn’t actually help the real victim.
If my neighbor steals a pound of sugar from somebody and I steal their car, to me it seems like I’m still doing something unethical. If my neighbor steals somebodies life savings and I steal their car, it feels like at best I’m doing something morally neutral, if not still outright wrong.
I’m not saying piracy is unethical, nor am I saying people shouldn’t pirate. What I’m saying is that certain arguments for piracy being ethical aren’t very good.
This is not about whether your neighbor is committing wrongdoing in your community, rather whether the system itself, and the edifices that hold it up are conducting themselves in good faith. Without these major players pressuring government to extend the enforced monopolies of copyright longer (that is, robbing the public – you and I – of its catalog of public-domain material) and failing to enforce educational and fair use, we wouldn’t have IP laws at all, and piracy would not be a thing.
Granted, some argue that creators would have no interest in creating, except that they do when they are given the means to do so. This is one of the threats social media has, in providing entertainment that is not sending its profits to the major players in the industry.
We’re not pirating from the artists. We’re not pirating from our neighbors. We’re pirating from giant corporations who’ve been plying the government for over a century now to strip rights from the public.
And given the government does not execute its function in good faith (that is, in service of the public, including protecting its interests from corporate capture), we have grounds to argue the authority of the state is forfeit, ruling the public by force rather than by consent (our elections allow us to choose from oligarch selects, and they have to obey plutocrats to keep their careers.)
Without the artificial construct by governing systems to make IP a thing to be licensed (and the use of DRM to control its distribution) neither patents nor copyrighted material would be a thing at all, let alone have been turned into the monstrosties that are US and EU IP law.
Firstly, the neighbor comment I made is an analogy. Nobody is claiming this is about literal neighbors committing wrongdoings in a community. I’m not sure if you’ve missed my point with that analogy or if you’re choosing to willfully misunderstand it here?
Second, what you’re claiming here isn’t correct when you talk about “what this is about”. My comment which you are replying to was not about whether “the system itself, and the edifices holding it up are conducting themselves in good faith” or anything like that. My whole point is about whether “If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase … I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas.” is good reasoning or not. Nobody is debating you on whether the modern media industries, the government, etc are corrupt or acting in good faith. That has nothing to do with my actual point.
You keep jumping back to these points of “well the media corporations, the government, etc did X wrong by us, so we’re automatically justified to pirate”, that’s not how this works. The whole issue is why does that justify piracy? Doubling down and trying to say “BUT I WAS WRONGED!” is not a good argument here. Being wronged in some way does not make it morally acceptable to just do whatever you like.
I am stealing this line for future references
I think this logic is silly.
Employers don’t own you, so witholding wages for services you provided isn’t stealing. Getting a haircut and not paying isn’t stealing.
I think the better justification is: rights holders make it a pain in the arse to access content affordably, so fuck you, just going to steal it.
You’re only partly right. You example services. Of course it is not possible to own services. Piracy is only applicable to products. The point of the Twitter guy is, that companies intentionally stop selling their software etc. as products to sell you the same thing as a service, so that you cannot own it.
It’s true that SaaS does stop you from owning software… But what good does “owning” a piece of software do you if you can’t get updates anyway? Back in the pre-internet era we got used to software existing as discrete versions but it hasn’t been like that for a LONG time. As soon as patching became a regular occurrence, “ownership” became a service contract with a CD attached. Then the CD vanished, and it just became a service.
While I do dislike needless “as a service” stuff, that model does genuinely suit a lot of people. It’s not a conjob; companies offer this stuff because a lot of customers want it. Most of the companies that are selling you SaaS stuff themselves use SaaS things in-house.
Yeah, it sucks to hear it, but this guy is right.
It’s also (typically) modeled in such a way that your software is consistently updated to new versions on release. You get active hotfixes, patches and improvements as they are released.
Most people jump software versions in stages of about 2-3 years. You’ll find a lot of SaaS packages will be priced as if you were instead purchasing the software at those stages.
All in all, if you have every intention of using the software regularly, it’s priced well and typically makes for a much better user experience.
Indeed. And that’s without considering that a lot of SaaS stuff on the consumer level lets you cancel at any time. Ok, you can get burned for 30 bucks if it turns out not to be all that useful, but the full packages are typically priced somewhere between eyewatering and “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING?”, and they always have been.
A perfect example here - GeForce Now costs like 20 per month, cancel whenever you like. A 4080 gpu costs way over a grand. It’s up to you whether you prefer to own, rent or not bother at all, but it doesn’t take a lot to convince me to spend 20 bucks, but it does take a lot to get me to stump up for a whole new PC.
I think you slightly missed the point too. I think he meant that even when you buy games for example (or any other software).You don’t actually buy the game. You only buy a license to use that software.
Not only that. Remember when Sony said that you don’t own the PS4 you bought for several hundred bucks but just purchased the right to use it as intended so you’re not allowed to tinker with it and for example install another operating system or figure out how their security works.
That’s what is meant by buying is not owning anymore.
I could go on about cars with subscriptions for heated seats that are already installed but not turned on etc.